Videos

Photos

More Like This

When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperone Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting... See full summary »

In a suburb of London, young Jamie is escaping sport hours, to avoid being the victim of his comrades. Young Ste, his neighbor, is beaten by his father, and comes to sleep overnight. They discover new feelings, sleeping in the same bed.

Spring. Yorkshire. Young farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker for lambing season ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path.

After a drunken house party with his straight mates, Russell heads out to a gay club. Just before closing time he picks up Glen but what's expected to be just a one-night stand becomes something else, something special.

After his gay cousin dies from hepatitis, young Laurent, who lives with his best friend Carole, falls in love with Cedric, a plant scientist. He's afraid to inform his conservative parents that he is gay.

Storyline

Two male English school chums find themselves falling in love at Cambridge. To regain his place in society, Clive gives up his forbidden love, Maurice (pronounced "Morris") and marries. While staying with Clive and his shallow wife, Anne, Maurice finally discovers romance in the arms of Alec, the gamekeeper. Written from personal pain, it's E.M. Forster's story of coming to terms with sexuality in the Edwardian age.Written by
Susan Southall <stobchatay@aol.com>

Goofs

Maurice Hall and Clive Durham are shown attending a concert at the Wigmore Hall in London in 1911. This renowned concert venue was originally called Bechstein Hall, having been built by the famous German piano firm, and was not renamed Wigmore Hall until after the First World War, when anti-German feeling had caused the owners to sell up and Westminster Council renamed the venue. See more »

Quotes

Alec Scudder:
[Writing a letter to Maurice]
Pretend to the other gentlemen that you want a stroll. It's easily managed. Then come down to the boathouse. Dear Sir, let me share with you once before leaving Old England if it's not asking too much.
See more »

Alternate Versions

Some NTSC versions are scanned at 25fps and the running time is short and seems edited but the movie is intact. See more »

Frequently Asked Questions

User Reviews

E.M. Forster (1879-1970) as a gay man lived long enough to see the Stonewall Rebellion happen across the pond the year before his death at the age of 91. Though close friends knew he was gay, as prescribed by the mores of the times, Forster led a quiet, discreet, and circumspect life. He was not a political person, first and foremost he was a novelist, though in his writings you can some trenchant comments about the political, never more so in his A Passage To India.

My guess is that if Stonewall didn't happen here and other developments such as the Wolfenden report recommending decriminalization of homosexuality in the United Kingdom hadn't happened, Maurice might never have seen the light of day. My guess is that Forster would have opted for a time capsule, hoping this novel of young same sex love would see the light of day in more enlightened times. He got to see those enlightened times come before he died, so Forster's novel Maurice was published in 1971 and came to the screen in 1987.

Forster's protagonist is Maurice Hall a young man with some unwanted gay feelings, unwanted because at the time those things were not discussed. Young Maurice forms an attachment with school chum Clive Durham. To put it in more modern terms they're the British boarding school equivalent of Ennis Delmar and Jack Twist.

And they view their relationship differently as did Jack and Ennis. Maurice truly hates the stifling conformity of Edwardian Great Britain, but Clive wants to put it behind him, get married and do as proper British society demands of him.

James Wilby is Maurice and Hugh Grant in one of his earliest roles is the shallow Clive. Maurice takes a path that E.M. Forster took in life as a gay man, as open as he could be, but most discreet.

I do wonder who the Clive character was based on. I also wonder if in the future, the proper Mr. Clive might have been giving the toe tapping signal in some bathroom stall looking to satisfy his real and closeted lusts.

There is also a great performance by Rupert Graves as Alec Scudder the stable-hand at Clive's estate who Maurice eventually does establish a relationship and some measure of happiness. It will be a tough road for them, not very many places on the earth will be that hospitable in the years just before World War I.

Maurice was written around 1910, a decade or so after the Oscar Wilde scandal and six years before Roger Casement's diaries were opened to the public to justify hanging him as a traitor in the Easter Rebellion. The gay baiting there was a deliberate tactic by the British government to shake popular support away from the rebels in Ireland. These were not good times for Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered people.

E.M. Forster wrote the novel and tucked it away. It's a beautiful work and a beautiful film made from same. I'm glad in the final couple of years of life, Forster saw the more enlightened times come so we could have a glimpse of what life was like for a young gay male in Edwardian Great Britain.

17 of 18 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful to you?
| Report this